Wollstonecraft And Plato 's Notions Of Virtue

4. Plato focuses on the ideas of piety and holiness, virtue and wisdom, laws and justice. In the Euthphyro he is

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

Virtue is a particular moral excellence, a beneficial quality, or power of a thing, and masculine strength or courage. At the end of the Meno, Socrates states that the hypothesis, "if knowledge is virtue, it can be taught." 1 The

In the Republic, Plato sets up a framework to help us establish what the four virtues are, and their relationship between them to both the city and the soul. According to Plato, the four virtues are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. There are three classes within the city: guardians, auxiliaries, and artisans; and three parts within the soul include intellect, high-spirited, and appetitive. By understanding the different classes of the city or parts of the soul, one will be able to appreciate how the virtues attribute to each one specifically.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman addresses the causality between a lack of education and a lack of reasonability. She advocates for virtue through reason, rather than virtue over reason. Wollstonecraft argues that the minimal freedom of women has limited their view on life, and thusly, their potential intelligence. In fact, she stipulates “all the difference that I can discern, arises from the superior advantage of liberty, which enables the former [man] to see more of life.” Through this greater exposure to the world, Wollstonecraft argues that man holds greater capacity for the development of a thoughtful mind. She extends this reasoning when asserts that a female who attempts to grow her intellect is quickly quashed through deflection to a life of domestic rules and behavior. Wollstonecraft asserts, “if they have natural sagacity it is turned too soon on life and manners.” In summary, this piece of literature contends that women are shaped into subservient individuals who lack the capacity for original thought and discourse. This is portrayed in her comparison of women to a soldier. “[T]hey may well be disciplined machines, but they seldom contain men under

Unlike the men, Mary Wollstonecraft agreed that individual freedom was very important to society, but that it also lead to more desirable equality for woman. “Women must be allowed to find their virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless women be educated by the same pursuits as men” (Doc D). Wollstonecraft believed the primary source was to educate woman the same as men. If a woman were educated the same as men the woman would have a greater value to society.

In the Socratic dialogues of Plato, Socrates often argues against the pretence of knowledge in his interlocutors. In the case of the Laches, Meno, and Protagoras dialogues, the pretence is the knowledge of virtue, among other things. The Laches seeks a definition of arête (virtue), the Meno examines the teaching of virtue, and the Protagoras offers a known expert the chance to defend that virtue can, indeed, be taught. Using these dialogues as a backdrop, I will provide an analysis of the arguments and comment on the acquisition of virtue in Platonic dialogue.

In Plato’s Apology and Emerson’s Self Reliance, the belief of the definition of a good life expresses in both pieces. In Apology, Plato tells a scene about a philosopher Socrates who is held for trial because his accusers accuse him of being an evil-doer, claim that he corrupts the youth, and a curious person who makes the worse appear better. Socrates of course disagrees with the accusers and claims that his accuser’s aren’t wise and are investing their time by spreading rumors of what is wrong with him rather than fixing themselves by feeding their souls with knowledge. Similarly in Emerson’s Self Reliance, Emerson expresses his ideas on how a wise individual should devote their life into trusting themselves with their knowledge and not go with what the majority believe in. Although Socrates states that the unwise are the ones who assume they are wise can contradict with Emerson’s idea in believing in yourself because too much faith can lead to ignorance by not taking in more knowledge that’s around you, I claim that Socrates agrees with Emerson’s notion of self- reliance which leads to the good life because both talk about pursuing the good life means to pursue knowledge.

. “that a little knowledge of human weakness”. . . “softness of temper”. . . and “outward obedience”. . . “will obtain for them protection of man”. However, if these women should “be beautiful, everything else is needless, for at least, twenty years of their lives” (Chap II. The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed, 1792, p. para. 2). Wollstonecraft implies that men are fickle creatures who after time of beauty in women passes, the man moves on in search of new lust in a younger creature. Furthermore, in three principles, Wollstonecraft defines what characteristics make men and woman

In the Republic of Plato, the philosopher Socrates lays out his notion of the good, and draws the conclusion that virtue must be attained before one can be good. For Socrates there are two kinds of virtue; collective and individual. Collective virtue is virtue as whole, or the virtues of the city. Individual virtue pertains to the individual himself, and concerns the acts that the individual does, and concerns the individual’s soul. For Socrates, the relationship between individual and collective virtue is that they are the same, as the virtues of the collective parallel those of the Individual. This conclusion can be reached as both the city and the soul deal with the four main virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.

In the Meno, Socrates and Meno discuss the nature of virtue, the process of acquiring knowledge, and also the concept of the teachability of virtue. Throughout the text, Meno suggests many varying definitions for virtue, all of which Socrates is able to dismantle. The point is also raised that it may be impossible to know about something that was not previously understood, because the searcher would have no idea what to be looking for. To dispute this, Socrates makes a point that all knowledge is innate, and the process of “learning” is really just recollecting knowledge that is buried deeply within the human mind. The issue of the teachability of virtue is an important theme in this dialogue because it raises points about whether virtue is knowledge, which then leads to the issue of knowledge in general.

The differences in Plato and Machiavelli’s accounts of virtue is evidently that they focus on different virtues and identify varying virtues as being valuable to political life. Plato discusses four virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Plato compares wisdom, or knowledge, to the sun in an attempt to aid us in understanding the Form of the Good which is the definitive entity of knowledge by saying

moderation, all ideals that would sustain the city and nurture it. Wisdom is found in

workers, so that they do not desire to be in the ruler's position. It is seen

The virtues Aristotle lists in the Nichomachean Ethics are derived from this, as are the virtues that Plato focuses on in many of his dialogues, but most famously, the Republic.  The four virtues to live by are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice, though Aristotle meant much further in bounding them. For both plato and Aristotle virtue was essential for happiness. A just citizen fulfills his role in society and realizes his dominant quality for the common good. There are different levels of justice, different ways of being